Martha Rosler is considered one of the strongest and most resolute artistic voices of her generation. She skillfully employs diverse materials to address pressing matters of her time, including war, gender roles, gentrification, inequality, and labor. From her feminist photomontages of the 1960s and 1970s to her large-scale installations, Rosler’s vital work reflects an enduring and passionate vision.

Martha Rosler: Irrespective showcases both well-known and rarely seen selections from more than five decades of work. Installations, photographic series, sculpture, and video represent a practice continually evolving and reacting to the shifting contours of political life. Throughout, Rosler’s work has been characterized by intellectual rigor and sharp wit, along with a sense of urgency directed at social and political issues that remain as relevant and immediate as when they first emerged.

The work of Martha Rosler is perennially incisive, provocative, political, and timely, exploring a range of issues from everyday life and the media to architecture and the built environment, especially as they affect women. Over her prolific career, Rosler has returned to themes of social justice, popular culture, food, gardens and the natural world, and the intersection of aesthetics and ethics. 

Martha Rosler: Irrespective is the only survey of the artist’s vital and enduring work, examining it across media including photocollage, video and film, installation, actions, and books. In addition to a rich array of artworks, this book presents texts by distinguished critics and art historians, and a candid and insightful conversation with the artist. Through her interrogations of the Vietnam War, the War on Terror, feminism, gentrification, and other timely issues, Rosler has persistently bridged art and activism. This important catalogue comes at a moment when work like Rosler’s has the power to inspire change.

Published on the occasion of the 2018/2019 exhibition at the The Jewish Museum, New York

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Martha Rosler (1943) is an American conceptual artist. She graduated from Erasmus Hall Hich School in Brooklyn, Brooklyn College and the University of California, San Diego. Martha Rosler works in photography, photo text, viedo, installation, sculpture and performance. She taught photography and media, as well as photo and video history and critical studies at Rutgers University, New Brunswick NJ and Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany.
She has lived in New York City since 1981.